Martin O’Malley Was Born to Run

Update: Jim Rutenberg spoke with Martin O’Malley this week about the events in Baltimore, a week and a half after this interview was conducted. Read that conversation here.

Before you were elected governor of Maryland, you were in Baltimore politics for 15 years, including two terms as mayor. Are you a big fan of “The Wire”? Oh, golly, when I was mayor, at one of the very first meetings we had with the university presidents, they were all bemoaning the image that the city had because of that show.

I heard you had some words about it with the show’s creator, David Simon. I passed on to him that the university presidents no longer wanted him to film his show in our city. He didn’t take kindly to that. More recently, I saw David on Amtrak. He bought me a beer for the ride home, and we caught up.

Simon partially modeled Tommy Carcetti, the politically ambitious mayor, after you. Did the character take a sinister turn after you first spoke? Oh, I don’t know. I was campaigning for governor, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to watch TV.

You’re considering a run for president. As of now, your main primary opponent would be Hillary Clinton, who has this aura of invincibility. How does that affect your thinking? Well, that’s not what I sense as I’ve traveled around. I’ve probably given the party address now in over 30 states, and my sense is that there’s a tremendous desire to hear the clear voice of a new leader.

If you do run, and I assume you will, are you going to do everything you can to win? I’ve never run a bad race.

Are you prepared to run as many negative ads as would have to be run? A lot of our Democratic consultants have fallen into the self-defeating prescription that the candidate that runs the most negative ads wins. I have a new theory: Positive is the new negative.

What about a positive campaign with a negative super PAC running next to it, lobbing negative ads on your behalf? Yeah, these super PACs are a sad reality of our day. We need to find a way to give ownership of our democracy back to the people with publicly financed campaigns, so they don’t feel marginalized by their own representative democracy.

Aren’t you afraid of the famous Clinton opposition team? Honestly, I like them. I love my country most, though. And I’m far more motivated by what would otherwise happen to my children’s country than I am by what others are going to do to me in the course of this whole thing.

In 2008, you stuck with Hillary until the very last primary vote, right? Yes. One of the first in, one of the last out.

What did she have then that she doesn’t have now? I think times change.

In 2013, you were one of a few Democrats to aggressively support Barbara Buono in her challenge to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Did the rest of your party let her down? I think so. Democrats haven’t been functioning effectively as a party at the national level. I think that some people around President Obama perhaps thought that they might transform us beyond the need for any parties.

You play guitar in an Irish rock band called O’Malley’s March. Are you going to gig at your own campaign events? I think that gets too hokey.

What’s the best rock song ever? Oh, that’s hard. I can only pick one? Like a “desert island disc”? “Born to Run.”

I knew you were going to go with Springsteen. That’ll be popular, though. That’s not why I said it.

Since announcing her candidacy, Hillary Clinton has not exactly made herself available to the press. Do you foresee going a similar route if you announce? As mayor, I got used to the fact that when you walked out of the house in the morning to pick up the newspaper, in your boxers, there could be a camera there.

So you believe in boxers, not briefs? Can I amend that?

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page 86 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Martin O’Malley Is Staying Positive. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe